


put all the stars to death

by melsandre



Series: i know the end (a collection of one shots) [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Emily has shit to work through, Episode: s04e03 Minimal Loss, F/F, Im so soft for Emily Prentiss its unreal, Reader is a very good gf, because she loves compartmentalizing all her big scary feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melsandre/pseuds/melsandre
Summary: reader comforts and tends to emily once she returns home from colorado after minimal loss (4x03).
Relationships: Emily Prentiss/Reader
Series: i know the end (a collection of one shots) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814539
Comments: 1
Kudos: 92





	put all the stars to death

**Author's Note:**

> as much as emily would try to repress all the physical pain she felt, she would try even harder to repress the emotional damage of being held hostage by a religious cult. that situation was fairly traumatizing and, aside from her own emotions, knowing that she couldn't save jessie from cyrus (even if jessie was ultimately the one to detonate the explosives) probably hit her hard.

You were slouched over your forearms, head hung low, tracing the rim of your mug with the pad of your index finger. Exhaustion crept into the corners of your vision. You had spent the entirety of last night on the verge of panic, anxiety clawing at your throat, while you waited for JJ to update you. You hadn’t managed to fall asleep until dawn, only relaxing once JJ had called to reassure you that your girlfriend was safe. Most of your day had been spent sleeping off the worries of the previous night and now you were waiting for Emily to return. She had texted, said that they had landed and she was on her way home fifty minutes ago. 

At the sound of her key scratching in the lock, you turned, clutching the warmth of the mug between your hands a bit too desperately. Emily pushed the door open and slung her go-bag off her shoulder in one smooth movement before setting her badge and gun aside. Your breath hitched coarsely in your throat when you caught sight of the right side of her face. She looked at you then, all sympathy and weariness. 

“Baby, you look a little,” Emily waved a hand, “tired.” 

You offered a limp smile, “I’ve just been worried.” 

Emily took a few careful steps closer and gently pried the mug from your hands, setting it on the counter. 

“Hey,” she lifted a hand to your jaw, “I really am okay, I promise.” 

“Tell that to your face,” you muttered darkly. Bruises flowered across her temple and cheekbone – a painful-looking collection of nasty purples and sallow yellows. The delicate skin around her eyes was speckled with the red of broken blood vessels and you could see that she hid a wince with every inhale. 

Rather than respond to such a loaded statement, Emily let out a quiet breath and tugged lightly at the hem of your top (an oversized Yale t-shirt you had stolen from her closet three weeks ago), pulling you behind her towards the bedroom. 

***

You were seated on the bed, legs folded beneath you, while Emily wandered around the room. Emily was always reluctant to talk about the things that happened to her, her traumas and feelings. For the most part, you were willing to wait it out without prying; you knew she viewed your relationship as a safe space and would eventually gather the nerve to open up. When you had first started dating, she tried to completely shut you out, going silent every time you questioned her when she came home with bruises or woke up screaming. It took time to build enough trust for her to be comfortable enough to really talk to you and even still she froze when her emotions got too thick and heavy, afraid that you might finally get scared off, might finally decide you despised her for her insecurities. It had taken four months for her to cry in front of you, six for her to cuddle closer to you in the midst of her post-nightmare panic attacks instead of fleeing to the bathroom, and seven for her to start bringing up her feelings without being prompted. 

Emily drew her shirt over her head evenly, tossing it haphazardly to the floor with only a faint inhale to mark her discomfort. You swallowed a gasp at the sight of her abdomen, which somehow looked worse than her face. Heavy bruising burgeoned across her ribs and side, darker than the bruising on her cheek and brow bone; as much as she was holding herself with a measured collectedness, her body looked wrecked. A suffocating sort of sadness tangled itself in your chest. 

“Em,” you whispered, hand subconsciously stretching in her direction. You knew that your hurt was written plainly across your face. 

A pained look flashed across her face, gone as quickly as it came. Emily drifted over to you until she hovered just at the end of the bed where you sat. You lifted a hand to her ribs, tracing the bruises that had grown across them. 

“I’m okay.” 

You tapped her waist and she turned obediently, exposing the few injuries that expanded across her back. They were less pronounced, less sharp than those across her front. You could guess that they were from getting tossed around by the man who JJ had told you had gotten violent upon learning that Emily was an undercover agent. JJ had warned you that Emily had been beaten and would look a little broken, but she had glossed over the specifics. 

Emily twisted back around, grasping your jaw firmly and forcing you to drag your eyes away from her injuries up to meet her own, expression laced with determination. “I am okay.” 

“Emily,” you murmured, hands continuing on their loving path along her side, “you don’t have to be.” 

She faltered, voice wobbly, “I am.” 

“Are you sure?” You pressed a feather-light kiss against her stomach, just below the bruises covering her ribs. 

“Stop,” she choked out. You watched as a quiet sob shuddered through her. She squeezed her eyes closed and bit harshly on her lip, trying to stifle the pain that threatened to force its way out. The walls she had constructed around this particular trauma swayed beneath the soft touch of your fingers as you cataloged her bruises. She was splitting open, fracturing. 

You pulled her even closer still, hands splayed across her waist, “c’mere.” 

“JJ told you what happened?” Emily asked, hesitation coating her voice. 

You shook your head slowly, “not all of it. She only told me that he hurt you. I think she wanted me to learn the rest from you.” You watched her carefully, “and I think you need to talk about what happened.” 

Looking rather defeated, she collapsed neatly onto the bed beside you, avoiding your gaze. She dug her blunt nails into her palm as best she could, trying to maintain some level of composure, but the emotion that welled up in her eyes was unmistakable. 

“The unsub,” she finally mumbled, “Cyrus, their leader, he found out that at least one of us was an agent. Someone had leaked it to the media. And he asked us, gun in hand, who it was. He was gonna shoot Reid,” she said weakly, “so, I told him it was me. I guess, I mean I just thought it was better me than him.” 

While Emily spoke, you had angled to face her. You let one hand brush through the ends of her hair, while the other you twined between both of hers to stop her from anxiously picking at her nails. 

She sighed, “He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me to some other room, a storage closet. He tossed me around, hit me, threw me into a mirror, kicked me, hit me more.” 

“Oh, Em.” 

Emily dropped her head against your shoulder. You could feel more than see the reluctant tears that spilled over her cheeks. Gingerly, you moved your hand away from her hair to caress her face, swiping your thumb across the bruising beneath her eye, smoothing away her tears. She sunk into the comfort your touch brought, relaxing against your fingers at her cheek. Wordlessly, you pressed a kiss against her hair. She let out another trembling sigh. 

“We got most of the kids out,” she deflected, “all of them, actually, except one. This girl, she was fifteen, and she was married to him.” 

You blanched at that – you knew they had been investigating allegations of child abuse, but hearing such a confirmation was disquieting. It would never get easier, hearing about the cases and stories Emily came home with. No one ever escaped unscathed, not even her team; aside from all the emotional damage, plenty of them had physical anecdotes of their own. It might have been disturbing if you were someone else, but you knew enough to understand that it was their normal. 

“She was the one who triggered the explosives after they shot Cyrus.” Emily went mute for a moment and then, “she genuinely thought she loved him.” 

You idly tucked a piece of hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear. “You cannot possibly save everyone, Em, you know that. You did the best you could.” 

“We could have done better,” she insisted a bit tearfully. 

“No,” you said firmly, “it was a difficult situation and you responded as well as anyone could have expected you to, if not better.” 

She hummed noncommittally in lieu of a verbal response. 

You stroked your fingers across her cheek. “Are you sore?” 

If you had been looking into her eyes you might have seen, briefly, a caged look pass across her face. You felt her stiffen, but she – as if remembering the magnitude of her trust in you – relaxed just as quickly. “Yes.” 

You scraped tenderly at the base of her scalp, raking your fingers through her hair, and she melted further against you. Emily burrowed her head into the curve of your neck, one hand unclasping itself from yours to wrap around your shoulder and hold you closer, tighter. A long moment went by before either of you spoke again, indulging in the warmth of such physical comfort. 

“Em,” you breathed. She grumbled some intelligible noise of acknowledgment against your skin so you continued, “we should go to bed. You’re exhausted, so am I.” 

She nodded against you before murmuring a small, “okay.” 

Emily delicately extricated herself from your arms and – while you buried yourself under the covers – finished changing into her pajamas, slipping a well-worn, years-old t-shirt over her head. She flicked off the lights before climbing into bed and tugging you so that your back was flush against her chest, arm over your waist and hand flat against your stomach. The last thing you registered before falling into a deep sleep was Emily whispering a sweet “I love you” against the shell of your ear and nuzzling closer. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter @aiexbiakes and buy me a coffee if you're feeling nice because I really am a college student just trying their best: https://ko-fi.com/alexblakes <3


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